India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting the main city in Himalayan Kashmir to campaign for his party in the staggered local election in the first such vote since New Delhi stripped the disput

The vote is the first in a decade, and the first since Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in 2019 scrapped the region’s special status and downgraded the former state to a federally governed territory.

With fresh faces emerging to challenge the traditional political powerhouses, the region’s political dynamics already appear to be changing.